The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a five year holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into International Paper Co (NYSE: IP)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.

IP 5-Year Return Details

Start date:

05/15/2015

$10,00005/15/2015

$7,23605/14/2020

End date:

05/14/2020

Start price/share:

$53.27

End price/share:

$31.57

Starting shares:

187.72

Ending shares:

229.21

Dividends reinvested/share:

$9.34

Total return:

-27.64%

Average annual return:

-6.26%

Starting investment:

$10,000.00

Ending investment:

$7,236.82

As we can see, the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -6.26%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $7,236.82 today (as of 05/14/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -27.64% (something to think about: how might IP shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Dividends are always an important investment factor to consider, and International Paper Co has paid $9.34/share in dividends to shareholders over the past 5 years we looked at above. Many an investor will only invest in stocks that pay dividends, so this component of total return is always an important consideration. Automated reinvestment of dividends into additional shares of stock can be a great way for an investor to compound their returns. The above calculations are done with the assuption that dividends received over time are reinvested (the calcuations use the closing price on ex-date).

Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 2.05/share, we calculate that IP has a current yield of approximately 6.49%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.05 against the original $53.27/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 12.18%.

More investment wisdom to ponder:“In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.” — Robert Arnott